Mixed Metaphors
by TamariChan
Summary: Their lives aren't destined to be simple. "The girl standing on the pedestal in the ball gown looks back at her, red hair too bright and eyes too blue and altogether too Weasley to get married so young."


**Disclaimer: The world and characters of Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling, not to me.  
**

**Betaed by the amazing Paula (Exceeds Expectations). Enjoy and feel free to review!  
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Mixed Metaphors

April.

It should be easy.

They have _that _kind of love, you see, where they smile like fools and hold hands and sprawl across the carpet without a care in the world for anything but each other. But it's not quite the stuff of fairytales, because the princess and prince never snuck around behind everyone's back.

Lucy is nineteen and not really beautiful, but he needs her. She snorts when she laughs and she says "only joking" even when she's serious and her favorite thing is his crooked smile. She brings him cookies just because and skips down the hallway and never never never seems to take off her rose-colored glasses.

Zacharias is thirty-eight and not really kind, but she needs him. He frowns when he thinks and he tries hard to insult her family and his favorite thing is coming home to her cheery voice. He helps her clean and holds her hair back when she has the flu and never never never looks her father in the eyes at work.

"We should tell my family," she says. It's a Tuesday in May but it doesn't matter because she says this all the time.

"Yeah, we should."

But they don't.

She sees her family for brunch on most Sundays and goes to her grandparents' house on holiday but she never mentions Zacharias.

It makes everything worse that Zacharias is her father's assistant at the Ministry. But really, the Ministry ball was so boring, and her father _did _tell her to mingle...

"It's going to blow up in our faces," he says. He knows because he's Zacharias and he's used to it.

"Mmm," she says. She knows it too but if she says it, it'll be true. She's Lucy, after all, and she's optimistic but she's not stupid.

Calendar pages fall from the wall. July, August, September, October. November is her birthday.

She doesn't tell them.

Zacharias bakes her a cake and it's awful. She pretends she likes it and laughs when he takes a bite of his own piece. He doesn't ask what she wishes for.

December, January, February.

On Valentine's Day, she makes him eggs over medium because that's his sort of thing, and he buys her glittery pens to write with because that's her sort of thing. She teaches him to dance and he teaches her to work.

"We should tell your family," he says as they watch Muggle TV on their couch.

"I know," Lucy says.

She closes her eyes and pictures her father's face.

March.

He goes to work every day. She stays home and writes. Zacharias doesn't understand writing. He doesn't understand that the words aren't pretty, not always. They're her blood trickling away, slowly, oh always too slowly, and she simply _must _write or she'll burst a blood vessel.

She writes about her family, over and over and over again. Their names aren't there - she doesn't write for a gossip mag, she writes for herself - but she writes them into every character, until there is another story she has to throw away.

"What are we running from, hiding from?" she asks. "Why am I so afraid?"

But she never really asks that, so nobody answers.

His jaw is harsh and square but it seems softer when he smiles. Once, he brings home work but she can't look at it with its neat heading - from the office of Minister Weasley - so he doesn't, after that.

He tastes like Skittles when he kisses her that night, an apology and an ache and a hunger.

She still sees her family often but she doesn't really, or they don't see her like they should. She is lonely. She would be, anyway, but she has Zacharias and that's almost enough.

It's getting hotter outside, so she sits on their porch railing and kicks her legs back and forth.

"We need to tell them," she says.

"Do we?"

"I don't know."

April again.

He plans a midnight picnic at a secluded park outside their flat. It's beautiful and there are more stars than tears she's ever cried and she's about to thank him for bringing her here when he's on his knees.

The box is black velvet and the ring is amethyst and gold, everything she's ever dreamed of, and she's shocked - she hates diamonds, but she never thought Zacharias knew that.

She doesn't have to think before she says yes.

Lucy is giddy and newly engaged and does that girly clapping thing she hasn't done in months. But it's not quite right - she doesn't skip anymore and the cookie pan is buried in the back of the cupboard. Maybe she is losing her spark, but she rationalizes. At least someone's there with her, someone she loves.

"I'm being ridiculous," she says to him, studying the ring on her finger. "It's time to tell my parents."

He nods.

But they don't.

She starts to cry at a family dinner but she makes it to the bathroom before anyone sees. Except her sister, Molly, but Molly sees _everything_.

Molly doesn't ask what's wrong. Lucy doesn't volunteer. And so it goes.

Zacharias knows something is wrong, terribly wrong, hair-pulling wrong, but he doesn't know what to do. Lucy doesn't know what to do. Neither of them have a clue.

He does his best to hold her together in the way that only he knows how.

"Should we invite them to the wedding?"

"Of course," Lucy says brightly. She smiles and her face feels stiff.

She writes the invitations herself - not all of them, of course not, but the ones to her parents. Maybe she feels like she owes them something, after everything, but the wording is exactly the same as the ones she sends to her aunts and uncles and cousins.

Lucy uses her best quill and presses firmly on the cream parchment in emerald ink.

_Lucy Elise Weasley &_  
_Zacharias Timothy Smith_  
_invite you to share in their joy at their wedding_  
_Saturday, June 20, 2020_  
_at 5:30 in the afternoon_

The date amuses Zacharias. He says it goes with her age, a bit sarcastically, and she is only too eager to oblige. June is a lovely month to get married, after all, and Saturday has always been her favorite day of the week, so it's perfect, right? A Saturday, sunny and happy and full of relaxation - everything that Sunday would be, if she didn't spend it with her whole family.

"Are you going to tell them, first?"

"No," she says. "No, I'll let the invitations speak for themselves."

She closes her eyes and pretends the word _coward _isn't between them. It can't be, because Zacharias of all people would never say such a thing, not to her, but it _is _there. It lingers in the air.

A Hufflepuff is as a Hufflepuff does.

May.

"I should know what I'm doing," Lucy says. The girl standing on the pedestal in the ball gown looks back at her, red hair too bright and eyes too blue and altogether too Weasley to get married so young.

Lucy leans her hand against the mirror and, with a hike of the full crystal-studded skirt, goes back into the dressing room. She doesn't get lost on the way.

May is too long, but it's June before they know it. Zacharias makes most of the wedding arrangements because Lucy's never even_ been _to a wedding before, let alone planned one.

She sees no one before the ceremony. She dresses herself in the mermaid gown, does her hair in the latest fashion, curls her lashes and reddens her lips, but oh, to have Roxanne or Molly or even her mother beside her. Peeking through the doors, she scans the room and there's red hair, so much, oh Merlin.

But then it doesn't matter, because she walks down the aisle and Zacharias is the only person in the room. She's a living cliché as she beams at him and walks too fast - but doesn't skip - and she doesn't stop to look at her guests.

"I do."

"I do."

Lucy _Smith _gets her very first kiss.

There isn't a reception, just the ceremony, so the newlyweds go home. Lucy expects someone, her father or mother or grandmother or sister or _anyone_, to stop her, but they don't. She looks on her way out and her family is there. They don't meet her eyes.

Zacharias almost tells her that it's time to let go, to move on, to forge a path that isn't highlighted in red and gold. But her laugh is too high that night and her nails are bitten down to the quick, so he doesn't.

She makes him cookies again, for the very first time as a wife. It keeps running through her head -_as a wife, the first, this is the first time I'll_- and it sends a nervous excited shiver through her every time.

"It didn't blow up in our faces," she says, sitting on the edge of the bed next to him.

He runs a hand through his messy hair and smiles at her tiredly. "No, I guess it didn't. I love you."

"Love you too."

It's still that kind of love, soft and warm, but can it replace everything?

Lucy wonders. Zacharias wonders.

Calendar pages fall and fall and fall - Lucy takes a savage delight in ripping them on the last day on the month. She has a mini one tacked to her desk, but it's barely visible above the pages and pages of desperation in glitter ink.

September, October.

"We should go see my family," she says, watching his eyes. "I miss them."

"If you want to, of course we can."

But they don't.

Lucy never lets go of anything – _like a badger, _Zacharias jokes, _dug in so deep_ – but she can't take that small step towards the Floo, the door, the shop in Diagon Alley.

And so it begins again.


End file.
